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  • August 25, 2017 at 10:48 am in reply to: The CIA and Me #73224
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant
    zn wrote:

    That’s what I mean when I say that to me, ideological notions (eg. “stability”) dominate things far more than any crudely direct economic interests. The economic interests are far more INDIRECT (is oil coming from “stable” places? etc.)

    Anyway, that’s just some ideas tossed into the ring.

    …

    But I think it’s clear that “stability” is desired because it helps profits, which help plutocrats maximize their own compensation packages. It really does come back to economic gain.

    And, unless I misread you misreading me . . . I’m not saying it’s necessary to be in a white supremacist mode for any of this, nor is it necessary for that to be a pillar of “empire.” Empire is now in service of THE empire: capitalism — and has been for more than a century. And America, working with dozens of other nations, seeks “stability” in order to do capitalist business. To make it flow. To ensure it dominates all.

    The major difference with modern age empires is that the people pulling the strings are from several nations, working together, not from any one nation, and their loyalties are to “growth” and profits, which wind up multiplying their own compensation packages.

    They all use the various countries, especially America, as the hammer to make sure they can pad their own wallets, and borders don’t matter anymore. But it’s really a false distinction, in my view, to say that because now, today, “empire” is international, it can’t exist, that it must have national boundaries, and be solely within those boundaries, or it can’t be called an “empire.”

    In the ancient empires, yes, the ruling class expanded their territories for their own gain, not the masses. So they kept this “in house” and within their own borders, which they hoped would expand on the map. They competed against other nations, dynasties, empire for land.

    Today’s empires, OTOH, after the map has largely been solidified — another aspect of “stability” — are now free to work on behalf of international movers and shakers, without concern for national boundaries. Yes, they have to be careful to give the appearance of patriotic planning, lest their own populations kick them out of power. But I have no doubt that what really matters to the governing class is pleasing the internationalist list of plutocrats and oligarchs, and those a bit below them on the wealth and power ladder. They do their bidding and they craft policy with them in mind. But American officials have a much easier time faking the patriotic stuff for this reason, especially:

    Most of the movers and shakers, the plutocrats and oligarchs, happen to BE American. And America’s economy overall is still roughly in the neighborhood of a quarter to a fifth of the total. As in, we still dominate the world on total share of the world’s wealth and economic activities, so it’s much easier for American governments to play the game of appearing to work on behalf of one nation. In reality, that governing class doesn’t care about boundaries. It cares about Capital, which crosses all of them.

    August 24, 2017 at 11:50 pm in reply to: The CIA and Me #73197
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant
    zn wrote:
    Billy_T wrote:

    My view is that calling something a “nation-state” is a good way to sanitize history

    I wish you wouldn’t frame things that way. My own view is to always prefer analysis, and one of my complaints about the present left–speaking from inside as a virtually lifelong member of the left–is that it sometimes gets into PC “whose the more pure” kinds of in-fighting.

    So no one is “sanitizing” history here. We are however debating the ways in which historical narratives are framed, and what their relative value might be. My claim is that the narratives for the past don’t fit the present.

    Not looking for lectures or offering any. Just putting hard pressure on analytic concepts. Which to me is always one of the best things about leftist discussion. Discussion being the goal.

    ..

    That was meant as a general comment and not directed at you, personally. Sorry if it came across that way.

    Yes, I agree we need to always update for present circumstances. I see my own analysis as including those updates.

    Anyway, good talking with you. Hope we can continue this over the weekend.

    August 24, 2017 at 11:44 pm in reply to: The CIA and Me #73196
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant
    zn wrote:
    Billy_T wrote:

    And, again, capitalists most definitely profit from our endless war in Afghanistan.

    Balance that against net loss of military expenditure and aid and so on then ask why it’s happening. There was no such thing in the old British empire as net overall national loss and economic drain against some profit just for some (that did not balance the loss). The entire thing was economically viable in a thousand ways. So you have to ask, what kind of ideological notions are at work to make this situation, the present, seem justifiable to people.

    The old explanation does not hold up.

    Any more than it did with Vietnam. (I actually debated people in high school who said Vietnam was about oil.)

    The old narrative are not working BT. Time for better ones. And I was saying that during Vietnam.

    From my readings, yes, the British Empire also subsidized private profit and the nation as a whole, back home, did not benefit nearly as much as capitalist interests. It was the first capitalist nation, and it’s first attempts to colonize other nations to expand capitalism were in Ireland and India. It could, at first, steal enough from those countries — tea, rubber, newly privatized land from ancient commons (India), herbs and oil, to name a few commodities, to trees and agricultural goods in Ireland, and very cheap labor in both countries. It expanded from there. But the nature of capitalism always, without exception, means the benefits are concentrated at the top and the nation as a whole sees little of that . . .

    From Day One of the British Empire, yes, they lost more than they gained, if you’re talking about the British people, as opposed to individual corporate interests and individual fat cats.

    So, America in Afghanistan is no different from past empires. It helps a few key movers and shakers, and hurts the nation back home overall, and it projects power. We taxpayers subsidize the military ventures, and our young die over there, as do thousands and thousands of innocent Afghanis.

    Vietnam? It was much more than oil. It was also rubber and a host of other specific natural resources. But mostly it was a matter of preventing any kind of blockage from our capitalists, period. Our military was engaged to prevent that. To make sure no nation — and no series of dominoes — could decide that they wanted to control their own economic destiny. As far as our movers and shakers were concerned, that wasn’t up to them. It was up to us.

    Taxpayers and young soldiers were tasked with keeping the shipping lanes open for American capital, primarily, but also European and Asian. So it went well beyond individual corporate interests and into ensuring the sustainability of the system itself. Its Prime Directive to Grow or Die.

    Cheap labor, natural resources, new markets. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan . . . all of these ventures were about individual profit-making and the wider protection of the capitalist system itself. It made no difference if it was a net loss back home. Taxpayers would foot the bill, and they always have.

    Were any of the “solutions” to the crash of 2008 in our best interests? No. Expecting foreign adventures to add up doesn’t make much sense when our domestic policies never do, either.

    August 24, 2017 at 10:59 pm in reply to: The CIA and Me #73192
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Oh, and speaking of France and its formation. Some more book recommendations:

    Graham Robb’s excellent The Discovery of France, and a solid reminder of how we, in the modern world, often forget how nation-states form out of seriously disparate cultures, and never “voluntarily,” or via majority vote.

    I also loved his The Discovery of Middle Earth, not to be confused with Tolkein. It’s a fascinating study of Celtic culture and its connection to the stars.

    August 24, 2017 at 10:52 pm in reply to: The CIA and Me #73191
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    And, again, capitalists most definitely profit from our endless war in Afghanistan. If by “we” you mean the American people, no. But then again, few of us “profit” from ANY of our foreign ventures.

    There has never been a war for the expansion of empire anywhere in the world, at any time in history, that could claim it was “profitable” for all citizens. Each attempt at empire got a huge number of those citizens killed, and their rulers always forced massive tax increases on those least able to handle it. The only people who “profited” from the expansion of empire, from the Sumerians, through the Egyptians, through the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and so all, all across the globe, were the ruling classes of those nations and a bit of “trickle down” to the peasantry. But because the cost was always deadly for that same peasantry, no one can really claim they made out overall. Not once. There isn’t once single case in the history of ancient, Dark Ages, Medieval or modern era empire making that can make that claim.

    It’s always been a few reaping the rewards, and they usually don’t fight on the ground.

    Anyway, I’m guessing we’re at one of those impasses. No worries, as the Aussies like the say.

    August 24, 2017 at 10:43 pm in reply to: The CIA and Me #73190
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    My view is that calling something a “nation-state” is a good way to sanitize history and confuse people into thinking they aren’t empires. They are. If you go back through history, there is little difference as to how they gained and held territory. It’s just that in the modern world, with the exception of world wars and the reshaping of boundaries — usually inflicted upon non-European peoples — these huge chunks of real estate have mostly stabilized. The chessboard is set. With that stabilization of physical maps, the next aspect of empire is economic, and the battlefield is owned by the capitalist system . . . the world’s first global empire.

    Capital controls the entire globe. It’s one economic system, worldwide, for the first time in history. No other economic system has ever done this, and no other economic system has ever had the internal impulse and drive to rule the roost everywhere.

    Nation-states fight over pieces of the empire, on behalf of capitalists, but borders no longer really matter. They’re not after specific territory anymore, one place at a time. They’re after market share, which includes dozens of populations — rather, sub-populations, never an entire citizenry.

    This is what makes it different, because empire is now “virtual” in both senses of that word. Not just in the Internet sense, but in the non-state, no-borders, invisible border line sense.

    And the hegemon of all of this? Us. The USA. It used to be Britain, now it’s us.

    So, we have an established mass of land that qualifies as “empire” in the ancient sense, and the new kind, which doesn’t care a whit about national borders. It just wants more market share, resources, finances, investment and cheap labor. All of those things together mean “empire.” And the desire to expand the capitalist system overall, or to stuff the pockets of key players — that’s a part of the deal.

    August 24, 2017 at 9:56 pm in reply to: The CIA and Me #73184
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    I’d highly recommend The Making of Global Capitalism, by Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch. It goes through the history (in detail, with copious sourcing) of America as the leading exporter of the ideology of capitalism. I think it helps us understand how America became a different kind of empire, once we had physically expanded enough to turn our attention to the business of expanding the capitalist system itself.

    My only quibble with the book is that I think it underplays the role of the military and intel. Not a huge amount. But enough to make a sequel a good idea.

    https://www.versobooks.com/books/1527-the-making-of-global-capitalism

    August 24, 2017 at 9:50 pm in reply to: The CIA and Me #73183
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant
    zn wrote:
    Billy_T wrote:

    But we’ve been an empire from the moment we added new “states” beyond the original thirteen.

    I think it’s a messy situation and deserves an analysis, which would not be easy, that fully accounts for its messiness.

    Going by modern, 17th-19th century versions, empires are extensions of commerce and don’t justify themselves much if they are expensive and not profitable. So leaving out the Romans and Chinese and the Mongols and the Persians and so on, looking at modern versions, they grab land and resources, and come along with various justifications having to do with progress, Christianity, and modernity and so on. But they turn a profit.

    That does not describe Afghanistan. Among many other things it does not describe.

    So to me there’s something too crude and simple to the notion that this is an empire. If it is it’s a completely different thing and the whole concept of “empire” has to be re-thought accordingly.

    Another example is Nicaragua in the 80s. There was no profit in it. It was driven by something else. Or Saudi Arabia. Old versions of empire, if you craved a resource (oil) you just took it on the ground. Went in, took it. Like the Ottomans. That does not describe the american/saudi (complicated) neo-alliance.

    So to me the key is ideological motives, not crude simple easy to understand ordinary “they profit and therefore act this way” views.

    And when you enter into ideological motives, you are at the level of fears and wishes and so on. Not material gain. You’re inside people’s eyes seeing how they see the world.

    I’m not seeing the difference. In the ancient empires you mentioned, “profit” was selectively made and held. Oftentimes, fought over within the ruling class of each empire, while various levels of crumbs were handed down the line to keep “lower” houses happy to various degrees. There has never been an empire that acted to provide “profit” across the board, and that didn’t involve destroying this house or that group, elevating this one, crushing that one, and most had major conflicts all the way up to sibling rulers. The Byzantine Empire might be the apogee of that, with endless assassinations within immediate families, including mothers and sons, etc.

    So, your “it’s messy” is very true. But that’s been a constant throughout the history of empires.

    When it comes to our own, I think sometimes people just look at the map and see the United State stretching from sea to shining sea, and think, “This can’t be an empire. It fits so naturally between oceans.” But as you well know, we wouldn’t have been able to push west and south (or try in the north) without massive military power, government spending on infrastructure, especially railroads, private armies and police, genocide of Native peoples, slavery, indentured servants, debtor’s prisons and so on. In that mix were winners and losers, mostly the latter, and “profits” were ginormous. That was the end goal. Government acted in large part under pressure to enable, empower and protect the profits of the few, and push for the globalization of the empire of Capital.

    As mentioned, extend this to the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, East Asia, etc. and profits for the few continued to be massive. If the military was necessary to open things up — and it always was — that’s profits for the MIC as well. Nicaragua? Profits for American capitalists who desired natural resources and new markets, like sugar. Central and South America? Everything from rubber (rubber barons, etc) to more sugar, to slaves, to oil, to new markets for capitalists in a host of different fields.

    Afghanistan? Same thing. Vast mineral wealth, plus military profits. Saudi Arabia? Vast oil profits for Exxon Mobil (and its peers) and the military.

    I think you can easily trace back ALL of our foreign military ventures directly to capitalist profit and the expansion of the system itself. It doesn’t have to be for the entire economy. All that’s needed is a few key players, movers and shakers, with the right connections and the right pressure on the right people to make it happen.

    IMO, we definitely have an empire. And I don’t see that view as “ideological.” To me, it’s just self-evident and empirically based.

    August 24, 2017 at 8:33 pm in reply to: AI weapons #73177
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    WV,

    If you get Netflix, you should really stream Person of Interest. I’m rewatching it now and I love it. Not perfect. It has some of the flaws that beset most thrillers . . . like the implausibility of some of its scenarios and resolutions. But it’s still well worth watching. It’s about an AI mass surveillance machine, and then a battle between two of them . . . plus police, CIA, various Intel groups, privatized and otherwise, fight over turf, etc.

    The “good guys” are trying to use the machine to prevent likely deaths. The bad guys want to use it for power and profit, of course.

    One of my favorites.

    August 24, 2017 at 8:23 pm in reply to: The CIA and Me #73176
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant
    wv wrote:

    There is no one, simple, agreed-on definition. Its a messy concept, for a messy, shadowy, dynamic. But some of us obviously think its a useful term. I think the term is related in some ways to the notion that the US is now an “Empire”. The Deep-State ‘agenda’ seems to have a lot in common with ‘Empire’. It has something to do with spreading War, buying and selling weapons, and controlling resources abroad. It’s not so much a ‘domestic’ thing — it seems to have something to do with Empire. The secret politics and secret technology and secret economy of Empire.

    This confuses me, WV. Cuz I think it’s pretty clear that America has had an “empire” for two centuries, at least. Even if we limit it just to the North American continent, it’s an empire. It was formed through obscene use of force, genocide and slavery, and we didn’t stop there. We added Pacific Islands, parts of the Caribbean, parts of East Asia, tried to add more all over the world, and when we couldn’t, we made sure we rammed capitalism down the throats of nations who dared try to decide on their own economic forms. We followed hard on European colonial powers, and then basically took the reins from them.

    I’m just not seeing anything unique about this, if we’re narrowing it down to the last few years. Yes, it would appear there is basically no pushback whatsoever anymore, regarding the mass privatization of formerly public goods, services and assets. But that started in the early 1970s, and prior to FDR in the 1930s, the scope of “the Commons” was even smaller. We just had this anomalous period of time, a freakish (though selective) break from all out private plunder, from roughly 1933 thru 1973, and then the Empire Struck Back. Along the way, it took advantage of all kinds of crises, like 9/11, to extend the covert and overt side of things, but, again, that’s always been there. It’s just a hell of a lot more sophisticated now, much better funded, and has much better tech.

    But we’ve been an empire from the moment we added new “states” beyond the original thirteen.

    I’d be really interested in your thoughts on why you think this is unprecedented, as of just the last few years. I think we both agree it exists, and that it shouldn’t. I’m just not so sure I buy the idea that it’s a recent development.

    August 23, 2017 at 12:38 pm in reply to: Interesting review of Risk, a documentary about Assange. #73108
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    As I’ve mentioned before, Assange is not our friend. He is not a leftist. He doesn’t adhere to leftist beliefs in championing the powerless, the marginalized, the oppressed. He seems not to care at all who he hurts or gets killed.

    And, from several reports, he is buddy-buddy with right-wing kooks. Makes zero sense to me that some public figures on the left support him and what he does.

    Transparency is needed from all “states,” corporations, institutions, etc. etc. and they all need to be able to make a case for their temporary lease on power. But when this transparency is bought with innocent lives, stolen, private information that serves no public good, the release of highly dangerous hacker tools, etc. . . . . it’s gone waaay beyond the pale. It mirrors the evil it’s supposed to be exposing.

    August 23, 2017 at 12:33 pm in reply to: Interesting review of Risk, a documentary about Assange. #73107
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Another key section to me, comparing Snowden and Assange:

    This ambivalence, too, is what makes Risk such a different film from Citizen Four (2014), Poitras’s intense, resolute, Oscar-winning documentary about Edward Snowden. While Snowden and Assange are often twinned in the press and in the public imagination, these films demonstrate how false that equivalence is. Snowden leaked classified NSA documents that he said showed rampant unconstitutional intrusions by the government into the private lives of innocent citizens, doing so through a careful process of vetting and selective publication by a circle of hand-picked journalists. He identified himself as the leaker and said he wanted to provoke a public debate about government spying and the right of privacy. Assange, by contrast, appears to have no interest in anyone’s privacy but his own and his sources’. Private communications, personal information, intimate conversations are all fair game to him. He calls this nihilism “freedom,” and in so doing elevates it to a principle that gives him license to act without regard to consequences.

    August 23, 2017 at 12:31 pm in reply to: Interesting review of Risk, a documentary about Assange. #73105
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    This is where I part company on the idea of “sunshine.” When it gets innocents killed, there is no rationale for supporting it. Knowingly putting people at risk like this is unforgivable, IMO.

    Most egregious, perhaps, was Assange’s collaboration with Israel Shamir, an unapologetic anti-Semite and Putin ally to whom Assange handed over all State Department diplomatic cables from the Manning leak relating to Belarus (as well as to Russia, Eastern Europe, and Israel). Shamir then shared these documents with members of the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who appeared to use them to imprison and torture members of the opposition. This prompted the human rights group Index on Censorship to ask WikiLeaks to explain its relationship to Shamir, and to look into reports that Shamir’s “access to the WikiLeaks’ US diplomatic cables [aided in] the prosecution of civil society activists within Belarus.” WikiLeaks called these claims rumors and responded that it would not be investigating them. “Most people with principled stances don’t survive for long,” Assange tells Poitras at the beginning of the film. It’s not clear if he’s talking about himself or others.

    Then there is the matter of redaction. After the Manning cache came in, WikiLeaks partnered with a number of “legacy” newspapers, including The New York Times and The Guardian, to bring the material out into the world. While initially going along with those publications’ policies of removing identifying information that could put innocent people in harm’s way and excluding material that could not be verified, Assange soon balked. According to the Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding in WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, their 2011 postmortem of their contentious collaboration with Assange on the so-called Afghan war logs—the portion of the Manning leaks concerning the conflict in Afghanistan—the WikiLeaks founder was unmoved by entreaties to scrub the files of anything that could point to Afghan villagers who might have had any contact with American troops. He considered such editorial intervention to “contaminate the evidence.”

    “Well they’re informants. So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it,” Leigh and Harding report Assange saying to a group of international journalists. And while Assange has denied making these comments, WikiLeaks released troves of material in which the names of Afghan civilians had not been redacted, an action that led Amnesty International, the Open Society Institute, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission to issue a joint rebuke. The group Reporters Without Borders also criticized WikiLeaks for its “incredible irresponsibility” in not removing the names. This was in 2010, not long after Poitras approached Assange about making a film.

    Lack of redaction—or of any real effort to separate disclosures of public importance from those that might simply put private citizens at risk—continued to be a flashpoint for WikiLeaks, its supporters, and its critics. In July 2016, presumably when Poitras was still working on Risk, WikiLeaks dumped nearly 300,000 e-mails it claimed were from Turkey’s ruling AKP party. Those files, it turned out, were not from AKP heavyweights but, rather, from ordinary people writing to the party, often with their personal information included.

    Worse, WikiLeaks also posted links to a set of huge voter databases, including one with the names, addresses, and other contact information for nearly every woman in Turkey. It also apparently published the files of psychiatric patients, gay men, and rape victims in Saudi Arabia. Soon after that, WikiLeaks began leaking bundles of hacked Democratic National Committee e-mails, also full of personal information, including cell phone and credit card numbers, leading Wired magazine to declare that “WikiLeaks Has Officially Lost the Moral High Ground.”

    • This reply was modified 9 years, 2 months ago by Avatar photoBilly_T.
    August 22, 2017 at 1:14 pm in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #73016
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    ZN,

    I can see a lot of that as possible. And another thing in favor of your reading is that most of his novels have a single-person perspective, in turns. He gives his characters their own space for that, if memory serves. So that what we read is limited to what they can know on the ground. They don’t get the bird’s eye view — or the dragon’s eye — with exceptions. I’d have to reread them to refresh my memory, and I don’t really have the desire to do that right now . . . but I think that’s the case. I don’t think he does the omniscient narrator stuff all that often, and definitely not as the main method of story telling — though I won’t swear to R’hllor, the Lord of Light, that I have the correct mix.

    In short, yeah. It’s quite possible he has it all (or mostly) mapped out and is just giving us glimpses, primarily because his characters can’t ever see the whole. He likely hopes readers put enough together to make it work. And judging from all the print spent on this or that theory, he’s definitely piqued a ton of interest. We wouldn’t be talking about it here if he didn’t get a lot of stuff “right.”

    August 22, 2017 at 11:23 am in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #73012
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant
    zn wrote:
    Billy_T wrote:

    But if Qyborn or the White Walkers do it . . . you’re no longer anything approaching human. You’re a zombie, for all intents and purposes.

    Those are different magics remember.

    Qyborn is represented as a kind of adventurer who actually really doesn’t know what he’s doing. He blunders along in a neo-scientific way in a world where magic is real but he possesses no real knowledge of it.

    The wights aren’t alive, they are more like spirits animating corpses. The magic of the walkers is different.

    The priests and priestesses of the lord of light are interesting because they have real magic at their disposal, but at the same time, there is absolutely no indication they really understand it or that through them we get a valid, real picture of a force they call the lord of light. For all we know they tapped into something but have no real idea what it is.

    But on the latter. It’s a faint echo of the distant, unknowable magic of the wizards in the Lord of the Rings. The wizards are actually servants of a higher being, but they have no knowledge of who and what it is, and whatever it is, it remains loftily distant from worldly affairs, only sending its own agents to blunder along in the world (wizards). The difference is, Tolkien actually explains that mythology. It’s just that in doing so, he knows more than the wizards, so to speak. Martin has it all entirely from a worldly perspective where we have no idea if the priests/priestesses of the lord of light are right in their religious convictions and explanations, and meanwhile…there IS something actually supernatural going on.

    It;s like ancient peoples who understood navigation at a deep level (see Pacific south sea islanders and their extraordinary and very ancient navigation techniques) but did not understand the world and stars and heavenly bodies in any real or valid way.

    …

    Writers/literary critics tell other writers that you should know everything about your characters and their world, their biographies, the historical contexts, even though you’ll never actually present that, or just present a fraction of it, selectively. It’s a tall order, and I don’t think most writers actually do this much beyond core characters and their slices of the world of the novel(s). I’m guessing Martin hasn’t thought all of this out, either, and his books don’t present the kind of complete world found in Tolkein or Herbert. It’s a highly imaginative rendering, but it comes across sometimes as unsure about its own internal “logic.” He leaves a lot of stuff out that would seem kinda important.

    Ironically, mostly cuz of the Internet age, you have legions of fans who put things together and expand his universe far beyond his own presentation . . . At least that’s my dime-store opinion.

    My guess is also that he hoped/hopes that through the sheer number of books — he originally just wanted a trilogy — he can do a lot of that without having set it all up up front. This also corresponds with the way most of us write fiction. The process takes on a life of its own. You end up being led by your characters more than you lead them — often. Things just seem to take shape beyond your original plans, and you have these eureka moments that just weren’t there until they are.

    The creative process, etc. etc.

    August 22, 2017 at 10:45 am in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #73010
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant
    zn wrote:
    nittany ram wrote:

    My take? Jon downplayed the story that he was brought back from the dead. He said that was an exaggeration. The scars say otherwise.

    Yes but what’s the big deal about THAT. That is, it’s not clear what the issue is for Daenerys. Unless it;s high school and only the really cool kids get brought back to life. I mean, she has dragons, is immune to fire, and has dealt with warlocks and witches. So why not a resurrection.

    It may have something to do with the prophecy regarding her inability to have kids, until . . . The TV show shortened it to a riddle about the sun rising in the west, but the books make it seem like Khal Drogo could be resurrected if she gives birth to a living child again. It’s not fleshed out, but her certainty that she will never have kids, and that the dragons are it . . . may have a loophole. And that loophole apparently could bring back her Khal.

    August 22, 2017 at 10:40 am in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #73009
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant
    nittany ram wrote:
    zn wrote:

    Why is it a big deal to Daeneryis that Jon is all scarred up?

    ….

    My take? Jon downplayed the story that he was brought back from the dead. He said that was an exaggeration. The scars say otherwise.

    It’s interesting to me . . . the various outcomes for people brought back from the dead and how much they retain of their former selves. In Martin’s world, that seems completely dependent upon who brings you back. So far, it looks like if a red priestess does it, you’re almost the same. But if Qyborn or the White Walkers do it . . . you’re no longer anything approaching human. You’re a zombie, for all intents and purposes.

    My current novel is about a ghost who comes back to figure out how and why she died. So far, I’m playing with the idea of how much of her former humanity she retains . . . how much she remembers, how much she can tap into her former, living self. The first version was basically a comedy. But I changed that to a serious attempt to play with the concept of rebirth. I’m not a believer in ghosts, but I thought it was an interesting plot device. We’ll see.

    August 22, 2017 at 10:32 am in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #73007
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    Also, on the issue of the TV writers versus Martin: It’s highly subjective, of course, but for me, based on reading just that series, Martin isn’t really a good writer. But he’s very good at making you want to turn the pages. He tells a story you want to stay with. I couldn’t put his books down, all the while recognizing that his prose wasn’t good. It’s clunky, needlessly repetitive in too many places and every book could have used a strong editor to rein him in. He needed his own Maxwell Perkins. But what all too often happens in the book business is . . . once you’re a star, editors tend to leave you alone. On a first book? They can tear your work apart, mercilessly.

    Most fans don’t get the chance to read the TV scripts. I never have. So I can’t compare the two. But the results on the screen make me think they’re better when they’re being guided by the books, even with their deviations, etc.

    August 22, 2017 at 10:23 am in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #73006
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    wv wrote:

    I watched the latest episode again, and i liked it a lot less. Too many plot contrivances.

    And i dont like what they’ve done to Arya. She should be smarter. They’ve made her seem pretty dum.

    Good series, enjoyable series, but the writers/producers have failed this season. Big fail, imho. My question is, is that because the writers were never that good, and it was all George RR Martin? Or is the main problem the producers decision to shorten the season.

    w
    v

    I usually wait awhile before rewatching them. Sometimes the next year. But it might be helpful.

    The TV show is all on its own now, and that may have a lot to do with this not seeming to fit together as well as it once did. It’s not really Martin’s story anymore. It’s the two guys who are reportedly also working on an already controversial show about a confederacy-won-the-war alternative show.

    Perhaps the main reason Martin hasn’t finished his series is that he tends to have all kinds of different projects going at the same time . . . and/or he just can’t figure out how to bring it all to a close in a way that he feels good about. He started the whole thing back in 1991, and it took him five years to write the first book. It was published in 1996. Last one came out in 2011. I’ve finished three of my own novels of in less than five years, but they’re admittedly much shorter. His tend to be in the 700-800 page range.

    I wish the show had be able to follow the books, instead of outpacing them. But Martin’s methods made that impossible.

    August 21, 2017 at 12:05 pm in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #72966
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    And, at the risk of belaboring the point — I’ve had waaay too much coffee this morning — here’s another major factor:

    From what we know of the GOT universe, the wights tend not to travel alone or in small groups. When we see them at this stage of the story, they’re a part of that mass army we saw at Hardhome. Which means, Jon and his band weren’t going to be able to go guerilla and pick them off one by one. They were almost certain to meet them as part of a massed army, and that should have been a factor in their planning. To me, knowing this, knowing the size of that zombie army . . . . that would have nixed the plan from the start.

    Anyway, the sun goes out soon. I blame Cersei.

    August 21, 2017 at 11:38 am in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #72965
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    zn wrote:

    I’m fine with the “bring back a wight” idea.

    In fact I don’t know what’s supposedly wrong it, to be honest.

    For me, two main reasons:

    1. The impossible odds (up front) with that very small band of men, going up against an army of the dead, capturing just one wight without ending up an unwilling part of that army.

    2. That Cersei would believe that just one wight proves the threat of a massive and growing army of the dead is real.

    It’s like, if your point is to demonstrate that a certain kind of offense will get the Rams to the Super Bowl, you won’t convince anyone, really, if you cite one successful play. They’re gonna want to see a critical mass of plays working, etc.

    August 21, 2017 at 11:32 am in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #72964
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    PA Ram wrote:
    Billy_T wrote:

    One of my current (bingeing) favorites is Person of Interest. It’s a Sci-Fi story set in New York that doesn’t make its Sci-Fi aspects hard to imagine as actually existing now. The foundational premise is mass surveillance via an AI “machine.” But it gets ahead of its skis at times when it sets up confrontations between enemies and heroes. When it has impossible numbers of enemies, armed to the teeth, facing off against the very small band of regulars.

    You know I have been wanting to watch that series for awhile but just haven’t done it yet. I know that Johnathan Nolan was a creator and I’m a fan of his(as my quote tag reveals)and so one of these days I have to do it. I want to see if it’s on Netflix because I’d like to start at the beginning.

    Yes, it’s on Netflix. That’s how I’m rewatching it now. I love it, despite the sometimes impossible story-lines.

    If you do start watching, give it a bit of time. It’s not one of those series that hits the ground running. It has a lot of complicated back stories, needs a bit of build-up and, IMO, it doesn’t really take off until they add the character of Shaw, played by Sarah Shahi. I think that’s in season two. But the show gains sustainable momentum toward the latter part of season one. You likely won’t want to stop watching it from that point on.

    I wish CBS had hung in there with it longer. If memory serves, it made it through five seasons, but there was enough material for more. It was nowhere near past its prime, IMO.

    August 21, 2017 at 11:16 am in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #72960
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    One of my current (bingeing) favorites is Person of Interest. It’s a Sci-Fi story set in New York that doesn’t make its Sci-Fi aspects hard to imagine as actually existing now. The foundational premise is mass surveillance via an AI “machine.” But it gets ahead of its skis at times when it sets up confrontations between enemies and heroes. When it has impossible numbers of enemies, armed to the teeth, facing off against the very small band of regulars.

    I really, really like the show, but I wish it didn’t do that, and I find it unnecessary . . . to push the plot, create suspense, thrills, interesting dynamics, etc. etc. I just see no need to corner heroes in such a way that their escape means we basically have to suspend our disbelief many times over.

    A pet peeve of mine . . .

    August 21, 2017 at 11:11 am in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #72959
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    Yeah, PA . . . “silly” is a fair critique. Too many impossible matters of time travel, especially, from Gendry’s speed in reaching the wall, to the speed of the ravens alerting Dany, to her flight to the exact right place to save the day.

    If I’m the writer, I don’t concoct the “bring back one wight for proof” story at all. It never made any sense within the context of the GOT universe. Far too risky, after what we all saw with the massacre at Hardhome. Sending a small troop of mortals to find a needle in the haystack of thousands and thousands of wights, and their white walker masters?

    If they needed to get a dragon to the Night King, there had to be a better way.

    One of the things that happens with a lot of fantasy shows . . . . and I mean this within the logic of the story itself . . . they often tend to set up impossible odds when that’s just not necessary. You can create stories of struggle, conflict, overcoming the odds, without them being impossible to overcome. By definition, the impossible part means you can’t. So they should dial that back a bit and make it crazy hard, but at least doable. The audience will find that thrilling and exciting too, and it won’t see it as “silly,” unless you set up enemies and circumstances that just shouldn’t ever be overcome. Again, even within the universe of the story.

    August 21, 2017 at 10:35 am in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #72953
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    This may be taking the easy way out, but . . . . I personally got frustrated watching the slow trudging from one part of Westeros to the next in years past. I think those episodes took too much time to get anywhere, literally and figuratively.

    But this season has the opposite problem. So . . . um, well. There’s gotta be a middle ground there, right? And I say that as someone who can’t stand that kind of assessment in most political matters. As in, public policy is naturally better if it’s somewhere “in the middle.” Aside from that being all relative, “the center” as usually defined by our two parties almost always means grotesquely ineffective mush.

    But when it comes to art and mapping out a TV series . . . well, I think there’s some merit in finding that sweet spot between trudging through the tundra for weeks and weeks and instantly arriving as if Scotty beamed them across Westeros.

    August 21, 2017 at 10:31 am in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #72952
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    Again, I love the show, so my own criticism always has that in mind. But I think this critique is pretty much spot on, and the author also ends it with praise. Frustration spelled out before that, but ends it with praise. Worth a read:

    Game of Thrones: the best show on TV just became the silliest Yes, this season may be thrilling but it’s too rushed – so much so, in fact, that little things like ‘logic’ and ‘character’ have all but disappeared

    Excerpt:

    A criticism commonly levied at recent episodes of Game of Thrones is that characters suddenly appear to have developed the ability to teleport from one side of Westeros to the other with no more than a crinkling of their noses.

    Jon was in Winterfell. Then Dragonstone. Then all of a sudden he was north of the Wall on some hairbrained scheme to kidnap a Wight. Whereas previous seasons would have dwelled on the minutiae of trudging from place to place, mining rich seams of character development along the way, this one has more world-ending matters to deal with than spending five episodes watching Jon and chums amble up a snowy hill. So it doesn’t bother. And while I reject the “teleportation” criticism – they don’t tend to show characters on the toilet either, because that too would be irrelevant to the plot – it is indicative of a deeper issue with the current series: that it’s become blindingly obvious seven episodes is simply not enough. The producers’ decision to shorten the episode count from 10 did make each episode a thrilling set piece. The problem is that they’ve been trying to cram so much into each, little things like “logic” and “character” have burst out of the seams.

    August 20, 2017 at 11:58 pm in reply to: GOT 7 ep. 6 #72939
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    Epic. I loved the episode, even though it was crazy and impossible and filled with plot holes galore.

    But, I hate the idea of Zombie Dragons. I mean, and I knew it was coming. I knew Zombie Dragon had to follow the best dragon rescue scene, evah. But the writers just stepped in it when they sent that small group on their wild ghoul chase, and there’s just no way to rationalize that, so you have to make up for it with an epic dragon rescue. The whole series was pointing toward that . . . though I’m not sure Martin would have ever set it up that way.

    Next Sunday is gonna be soooo wild.

    Speaking of time, Business Insider has a map (prior to this episode) of all the Jon Snow travels, compared to the White Walkers and the Wights. Martin didn’t explain this in the books, if memory serves, but, sheeesh!! One team must live on coffee and Red Bull, while the other prefers a different kind of buzz.

    map shows how far Jon Snow has traveled compared to the White Walkers on ‘Game of Thrones’

    August 20, 2017 at 1:04 pm in reply to: 9-11 the free-fall argument #72921
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    zn wrote:
    Billy_T wrote:

    . But it would seem, at least on the surface, that corporate interests have aligned with the insurance industry, for some bizarre reason . . . I haven’t figured that one out yet.

    Businesses receive subsidies when they pay for insurance for employees. I am not sure of the details on that or how it works.

    BUT single payer could not be gathering steam if it were universally opposed by business interests.

    And btw a lot of this is just me getting my vote in on this or that topic. If WV wants to talk about the mega-corps that’s fine with me, not that he should care either way if it;s fine with me or not. I was just saying why I don’t use that particular terminology. We’re all allies whatever which way we put it, and purity of terminology is for purists, or for the pure, which actually don’t exist. (Yes I am a pure purist about the existence of the pure.)

    More good points. But, in the spirit of just being plain obnoxious, I’m a pure purist about the non-existence of the pure. I don’t think there is such a species seeking that sort of thing. But that’s purely conjectural, I suppose.

    I guess that’s one of those Barber of Seville kinds of cone-em-drums . . .

    August 20, 2017 at 11:57 am in reply to: 9-11 the free-fall argument #72916
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    wv wrote:

    Are we really in Alex-Jones Territory if we wonder about the influence of the Bildergers/Tri-lateral folks? The CIA/NSA folks? The Mega-Corpse? Etc.

    Well no, not for most of those, that’s not Alex Jones stuff. You can add the Koch brothers to that. The “mega corpse” one isn’t in that territory because Jones would never go there. I do think that one’s too big though. THe american corporate/business world is just simply not unitary enough to conspire on anything. That’s like saying all scientists lie about climate change. At that point IMO you’re really in the murkier territory of interests and policies. That is, it’s in xyz’s interests to have xyz policies. Even that doesn’t hold as unitary. I mean, is Ben and Jerry’s really the same as Exxon?

    Corporate interests aren’t necessarily “unitary” as you mention. You’ve talked about that for some time now. But the capitalist system established itself as the first unified economic system in history. Nothing prior to it ever sought the kind of total legal and social control it now enjoys, and its innate impulses force it to pursue more and more unification. Prior to its destruction of previous economic systems, which were independent of one another, and mostly limited to the local, you actually had, ironically, “free markets.” The whole deal for capitalism is to control those markets under one standardized set of rules, acceptable currencies, trade agreements, international ruling bodies and so on. Again, all of that is unprecedented.

    To me, that’s naturally going to lead to a great deal of “same page” decision-making, but that doesn’t necessarily mean conspiracies, which is your point, unless I misread you.

    One example of a seeming conflict of corporate interests is the battle against Medicare for All or Single Payer. One would think it would be an awesome deal for most capitalist businesses. The public would pick up the tab for health insurance entirely. No more burden for individual companies. The obvious opposition to that is the private insurance industry itself. But it would seem, at least on the surface, that corporate interests have aligned with the insurance industry, for some bizarre reason . . . I haven’t figured that one out yet.

    August 20, 2017 at 11:09 am in reply to: 9-11 the free-fall argument #72914
    Avatar photoBilly_T
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    wv wrote:

    Well ok, if that is how “conspiracy theory” is defined in academia, so be it. It basically only applies to the Alex Jones nutcase-theories.

    I would only caution we must be wary of lumping everyone who wrestles with notions of concentrated power into that nutcase-group.

    We know there are very very powerful groups in the country and the world and they wield a lot of power. Are we really in Alex-Jones Territory if we wonder about the influence of the Bildergers/Tri-lateral folks? The CIA/NSA folks? The Mega-Corpse? Etc.

    One of the problems I see, is, this is beyond scientific study. At least it looks that way to me. How does one ‘study’ what the Rothschilds are doing? Or the Rockefellas or Morgans or the mega-corpse lobbyists? How does one study the corporotacracy scientifically? And if one is wedded to sciency-thot then perhaps one is very quick to dismiss ‘conspiracy ideas’ ?

    w
    v

    Yes, there are obviously powerful groups who control vast amounts of resources and seek to maintain and grow that power. I think the Alex Jones nutcase stuff kicks in most often when people bring old myths into the present. The one about the Rothchilds, for instance, goes back to the battle of Waterloo.

    This happens innocently and not so innocently. There are plenty of people who question these things out of sincere, authentic motives and very best intentions, from the pov of a strong moral compass, and I’d put the posters here in that category.

    The Rothschild Libel: Why has it taken 200 years for an anti-Semitic slur that emerged from the Battle of Waterloo to be dismissed? Thirty years after the dust had settled on the fields of Waterloo, a poisonous anti-Semitic pamphlet circulated in Europe, claiming the Rothschild family had accrued its vast wealth on the back of Wellington’s triumph. The ‘facts’ were entirely made up Brian Cathcart Sunday 3 May 2015 05:00 BST

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